Gazette Comment: It's a crying shame what is happening at Lister Petter

3:35pm Thursday 27th March 2014

IT is a crying shame that a company with such an illustrious history as Lister Petter has gone into administration after a torrid few years.

If you ask anybody over a certain age in Dursley or the surrounding area what they did for work before they retired they would more often than not say they worked at Berkeley Nuclear Power Plant or one of the Lister companies.

At its height, when Lister products were being sent to all four corners of the globe, 5,000 people were said to work at the town's factory.

Although the original Lister company has gone through several owners and changes in its 140-year history, the people of Dursley have always felt it was a part of community, regardless of its diminished stature in the world.

So it must be heart-breaking for many to read of the problems the firm has had over the last ten years or so including administrations, redundancies and claims of staff working in poor conditions.

This culminated in the scandal of a top-level employee showing off his brand new Ferrari to the workforce shortly after they had been told many of them would not have jobs by Christmas last year.

For a company known for how well it treated its staff in the past, the developments over the last decade are a sad read for the thousands that have been associated with the company.

All we can hope now is the remaining workforce are considered in the coming days when the administrators look to either save or sell off the business.